Path 2

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff Steps Down

December 6, 2007

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff will step down from his dollar-a-year post as the city’s economic development chief some time around the new year, but will become the new president of the mayor’s media company, Bloomberg LP, Mayor Bloomberg announced Thursday. It was also suggested that Doctoroff may head the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, which oversees development on the Hudson Yards and the far West Side.

“As the chief architect of our five-borough economic development plan, Dan Doctoroff has done more to change the face of this City than anyone since Robert Moses,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

But a review of Doctoroff’s City Hall appointment calendars and phone logs—obtained under a Freedom of Information request—shows that he frequently finds himself meeting and talking about city business with those who are also being asked to ante up Olympics contributions. They also show that Doctoroff, frequently with Kriegel in tow, has taken his Olympics act all over town in search of support. They have made presentations to major corporations, real estate groups, labor unions, and construction firms, all of whom constantly interact with city government on their issues.

While it’s inevitable that the city’s deputy mayor for economic development would want to meet and talk with executives of Gotham’s biggest banks and corporations, his Olympics crusade is a complicating factor that, at least to outside appearances, muddies the waters.

There are many reasons why the city is adaptation-averse, and, of course, they start with real estate interests. If Doctoroff were to take adaptation seriously, he’d have to rethink his growth agenda, much of which is centered on the city’s shoreline. His greatest development initiatives are coastal rezonings, from the West Side to Greenpoint/Williamsburg; at the same time that he can’t get even “moderate” estimates of sea-level rise right, he’s spurring development by the sea at an unprecedented pace.The Voice has overlaid Doctoroff’s biggest projects onto maps of both FEMA-defined floodplains and Office of Emergency Management’s storm evacuation zones, and it’s as good a fit as the deputy mayor’s suits. Informed of this awkward coincidence at the Schumer party, Doctoroff said he would have to “look into that.” Aggarwala later confirmed that the projects indeed were in the zones. But Doctoroff’s 35-year-old, $159,720-a-year sustainability master planner would only say that “we are thinking about the impact of climate change on some of the new development,” refusing to specify any changes in city waterfront planning that are being contemplated.